


Heel Turn

by gardnerhill



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: BAMF Joan, Boot Worship, Community: watsons_woes, Crack, Gen, Prompt Fic, Shoes, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 22:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4239105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan Watson could teach <a href="https://youtu.be/2k6I7NYvgIQ?t=100">Japheth the Goat</a> a few things about Being Prepared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heel Turn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AtlinMerrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/gifts).



> For the June 2015 Watson's Woes theme, “Be Prepared.” Also, Joan Watson's amazing outfits and footwear should get equal billing on _Elementary_ with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu.

Joan Watson strides through her city, exuding a confidence and self-belief so powerful that it radiates out to touch her clients. It is an awe-inspiring sight – this petite Chinese-American woman in a milieu often brutal, overwhelming, saturated with testosterone, ugly with white entitlement, male entitlement, might-makes-right and/or biggest-macho-asshole-wins attitude (and that’s just among the law-abiding, never mind the criminals among which she travels now with her partner). She is hard to miss in her NYC-chic outfits, beret and heels, walking the foulest alleys and the poshest penthouses as if surveying her kingdom.  
  
Many wonder what her secret is. Some postulate it is her upbringing – pride and confidence, possibly some self-defense training. Some wonder if she’s seen the “think murder” walk done by Charlize Theron. These all contribute, of course, but they are not the biggest reason.  
  
That reason is because Joan Watson is Prepared.  
  
(Not _carrying a gun_ , you insufferable clot, _prepared_. Go back to your acts of onanism amid your cache of unsecured war-weapons.)  
  
Everyone who knows Joan Watson also knows that she carries no weapon-like objects save for her Swiss Army knife (buy her a Long Island iced tea and she’ll tell you about the emergency tracheotomy she did with it in the lobby of a Trump hotel, while The Donald himself was yelling at her) and her baton, which serves well enough to hamper a running suspect or to teach a gentleman the concept of personal space. Sherlock tries to get her to take singlesticking more seriously but is beginning to think that it’s a lost cause.  
  
Most importantly, Joan Watson is armed with one of her greatest assets – her fashion sense. She knows just what shoes to wear with that day’s outfit.  
  
***  
  
The solid-heel knee-high boots were on her feet the day she was cornered by a petty killer-for-hire. She pulled off one, and slung it by its perfectly-tooled leather upper to deliver a debilitating blow between the goon’s eyes. His mug shot featured a perfect imprint of the heel – maker’s trademark and all – on his forehead.  
  
***  
  
Her Uggs got her safely across a slushy street on a bitter day when she recognized a couple of former patients huddled in an alley, and the twin shawarmas she’d tucked in their furry depths to keep warm (both their lunches and her calves) were well-received by the homeless pair. Joan and Sherlock split the pitas and hummus (snug in her parka hood) and called it a good day.  
  
***  
  
Romulus and Remus both took a shine to her gladiators, and with a little practise she trained them to sit on the soles while she walked in them. Both former gamecocks enabled her to enter a foot-fetishists’ club to look for a person of interest in a disappearance – and the birds created a splendid diversion (aided by a bowl of peanuts) when she required a hasty exit out the back.  
  
***  
  
“Everyone” sent Joan a pair of jodhpurs in exchange for one of Sherlock’s bouts of public humiliation (let us only say it involved animated ponies). That the anonymous collective knew her exact foot-size was creepy enough, but that the footwear’s color matched the perfect outfit with which to show them off had her avoiding her laptop for a week. Aware of their M.O., Joan inspected the Greek gifts and saw that one decorative bead at the left toetip was a tiny camera, activated by one click of the heels; after disabling the self-feed and readjusting the bead-lens to protect her own privacy (and getting an anonymous congratulatory e-mail seconds later for catching that) she had the coolest spy-shoes outside of a Bond film. She might be proudest of the time she got an entitled young snot of a stockbroker fired for catcalling her when the camera did a face-read and sent the footage directly to his boss on loudspeaker – who lost a big Tokyo account when the clients heard the Asian slurs the white kid used.  
  
***  
  
Her mid-calves were good for running, which she did across the lobby of a Trump hotel when she recognized the signs of someone choking, and – well, the rest would require a Long Island Iced Tea.  
  
***  
  
A 6-year-old girl in the station wouldn’t stop staring at Joan’s high-heeled booties. When Joan let her clump around in the grown-up shoes, she finally began to talk about the man who had hurt her.  
  
***  
  
The over-knee boots helped her thump out the rhythm on the stage where she led a crowd of Renaissance Faire-goers in a bawdy drinking song whilst the knave playing the fiddle behind the wench scanned the faux-Elizabethans for their suspect. Not surprisingly, they finally cornered him at one of the beer booths, and Sherlock only had to start describing Tudor-era torture devices to get him to spill the beans.  
  
***  
  
All right, the rocket boots were a mistake. Don’t ask. Just don’t ask. Clyde still won’t come out of his log.  
  
***  
  
“Great shoes, lady!” a transitioning woman called across a courtyard about Joan’s bronze ankle-boots; Joan let Amelia know where to find them, reassuring her that the company made fabulous heels in all foot sizes and widths, and gained a contact in the New York Library system.  
  
***  
  
Maybe it was the stiletto applied to a howling mugger’s back with surgical precision, or possibly the wedge anklets tapping across the floor that found the hollow space where Stella Yoshizawa had stashed the murder weapon. Maybe it was even the rocket boots. But whatever the reason, Sherlock has finally stopped nagging Watson about the damn singlestick. He sees his partner go forth or sends her out with confidence that, whatever comes, Joan will be ready for it – that she does not carry weapons so much as she walks in them.

**Author's Note:**

> For Atlin Merrick, because I realized just how big an inspiration her [Minutiae](http://archiveofourown.org/works/441850/chapters/10281438) was on this story.


End file.
